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I think it would be useful to have a Help page "If you're new to Salesforce" that lists some of the basic resources available: Trailhead, force.com documentation list page, Salesforce/Dreamforce YouTube videos, the SOAP API objects reference page, etc.

Edit

This would be good for the type of question that begins "I'm new to (fill in the blank) in Salesforce ..." and it's not clear whether the poster has tried any of these basic resources yet. Something like the "How to Ask" link that we can include in a comment.

I wasn't familiar with canonical answers, but wouldn't you then need an answer for every significant area, like unit tests, bulkification, process builder, formulas, REST API, VF in Lightning, etc?

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    I think it can't be done. I'm not certain but I don't think you can customize what's in the help center. – Adrian Larson♦ Mar 27 '18 at 19:30
  • Would it be useful to have a canonical Meta question to link to? – David Reed♦ Mar 28 '18 at 18:49
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Other sites do this via canonical answers, although we've rarely ever done so. For example, when a ton of questions regarding Meltdown and Spectre hit Security.SE, a canonical answer was given so they could close a bunch of duplicates. I've thought about doing this myself before, but I always seem to forget which ones I've flagged for potential canonization. If you want to write a draft up in meta, I'm pretty sure we can have it moved over to the main site later; this would let us review the question and answer, amend it as appropriate, then move it to the main site for usage as a master for duplicates. I'd be willing to help review/draft such a question myself, and I'm sure many of our other main members would do as well.

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  • I edited my post to include more detail. Is it feasible to maintain canonical answers for questions that begin "I'm new to (fill-in-the-blank) in Salesforce ..." given the range of possible topics? – David Cheng Mar 30 '18 at 20:06
  • @DavidCheng "but wouldn't you then need an answer for every significant area...?" Yes, you would. We could probably easily come up with 50-100 questions and answers, a community effort, perhaps tag all of them with a new tag (e.g "canonical"), and all answers would be community wiki answers, and probably protected by mods to avoid vandalism. But the main point is that it would be a community effort, not just a single person, though someone could spearhead it. – sfdcfox Mar 30 '18 at 20:15
  • On stackoverflow, I've seen this done on a tag by tag basis, where major users of a tag create canonical answers to close low quality duplicates. It works, but the answers can become outdated if the users don't upkeep them. I know myself & other users would be willing to assist in this. – battery.cord Apr 4 '18 at 13:51

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